One of my favorites, which I read as a teenager in the 70s, was "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed", about a startup that tried to commercialize a hybrid airship/airfoil

One of my favorites, which I read as a teenager in the 70s, was "The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed", about a startup that tried to commercialize a hybrid airship/airfoil craft. It provided the first description I'd read of using a computer approximation to solve a real-world optimization problem (in this case, finding the shape that gave the best combination of volume for helium and aerodynamic lift with the least drag).